Gartner, Inc. has identified 10 mobile technologies that will evolve significantly through 2011 in ways that will impact short-term mobile strategies and policies. Investments in mobile applications and technologies will increase through 2011 as organizations emerge from the recession and ramp up both business-to-employee (B2E) and business-to-consumer (B2C) mobile spending.

“We are highlighting these 10 mobile technologies that should be on every organization’s radar screen,” said Nick Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “These mobile technologies were selected because they will evolve in ways that affect corporate strategies, significant numbers of customers or employees will adopt or expect them, or they will address particular mobile challenges that organizations will face through 2011.”

The 10 mobile technologies to watch in 2010 and 2011 include:

Bluetooth (3 and 4)
Two new Bluetooth versions will emerge by 2011: Bluetooth 3 will introduce 802.11 as a bearer for faster data transmission, and Bluetooth 4 will introduce a new low-energy (LE) mode that will enable communication with external peripherals and sensors. Both versions will include other technical improvements to improve battery life and security. Gartner believes that Bluetooth 3 will facilitate corporate and consumer functions demanding large bandwidth (e.g., downloading images and videos from handsets). Bluetooth LE will enable a range of new sensor-based business models in industries such as fitness, healthcare and environmental control and will be used by handset and PC peripherals to enable new functions, such as PCs that autolock when users move away from them.

The Mobile Web
By 2011, over 85 percent of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser. In mature markets, such as Western Europe and Japan, approximately 60 percent of handsets shipped will be smartphones with sophisticated browsing capability and the ability to render conventional HTML sites in some manner. The growth in smartphones with relatively large and high-resolution screens will encourage greater numbers of people to access conventional websites on mobile devices, and will make it possible to deliver some B2C applications using conventional Web tools without adaptation. In mature markets, the mobile Web, along with associated Web adaptation tools, will be a leading technology for B2C mobile applications through 2012, and should be part of every organization’s B2C technology portfolio.

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Gartner, Inc. has revealed its key predictions on the use of social software and collaboration in the enterprise. These predictions focus on offerings ranging from team collaboration to dynamic social networking applications that offer rich profiles and activity streams.

“A lot has happened in a year within the social software and collaboration space. The growing use of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook by business users has resulted in serious enterprise dialogue about procuring social software platforms for the business,” said Mark R. Gilbert, research vice president at Gartner and co-chair of the Portals, Content and Collaboration (PCC) Summit. “Success in social software and collaboration will be characterized by a concerted and collaborative effort between IT and the business.”

Gartner offers five key predictions for social software:

By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

Greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications. During the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts. Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.
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Gartner, Inc. has highlighted the key predictions that herald long-term changes in approach for IT organizations and the people they serve for 2010 and beyond. Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 showcase the trends and events that will change the nature of business today and beyond.

These predictions were selected from across Gartner’s research areas as the most compelling and critical predictions. The trends and topics they address this year speak to the changing balance of power and focus in IT. Gartner analysts said last year’s themes of shifting ownership and revenue flows continue, becoming more pronounced and more sharply focused. As the macro-economic environment adjusts to a new balance between supply, consumer demand and regulation, the focus of this year’s top predictions has expanded to encompass shifts in the way that users interact with IT.

“As organizations make plans to navigate the economic recovery and prepare for the return to growth, our predictions for 2010 focus on the impact of critical changes in the balance of control and power in IT,” said Brian Gammage, vice president and research fellow at Gartner. “With greater financial and regulatory oversight for all IT investment decisions, few organizations will be unaffected.”

“For many organizations, the economic and budgetary challenges of 2009 drove important changes in the general governance of IT investment decisions, accelerating the trend toward greater accountability and transparency,” said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and chief Gartner fellow. “With a strong emphasis on business-case justifications, chief financial officers (CFOs) assumed a more active role. Although most organizations enter 2010 preparing for a return to growth, this financial oversight is unlikely to be lifted anytime soon. For IT leaders, greater fluency in the language of business has become a requirement.”

Gartner’s top predictions are intended to compel readers to action and to position themselves to take advantage of coming changes, not to be damaged by them. Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 and beyond include:

By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets. Several interrelated trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks.
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Gartner predicts the number of mobile payment users worldwide will hit 73.4 million by 2009 and 190 million by 2012. This represents a tremendous percentage of total cell phone users (Gartner estimates upwards of 3% of the total user base) and companies must consider this technology as a potential payment channel comparable with checks, cash and electronic funds transfers.

Retailers First Adopters of Mobile Payments

The benefits of mobile payment solutions for retailers are obvious. The ability to accept credit card payments or mobile payments on a wireless device such as a smartphone enables retailers to create a host of new, innovative and engaging retail platforms. “Pop-Up Retail,” a term coined by Trendwatching.com, is a temporary retail space designed to quickly draw in crowds in high traffic areas then disappear once buzz wanes. Think fairs, concerts and other outdoor venues with massive crowd attendance. Because these events have limited time durations the expense of creating a permanent retail space (and the infrastructure to support it like phone and internet lines) is prohibitive.

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